YouTube censored the YouToube channel of author and philosopher Stefan Molyneux Monday, amidst a massive crackdown on free speech on major Big Tech platforms such as Twitch, Reddit, and Twitter.
Multiple channels that complied with YouTube’s terms of service were banned Monday morning, the most prominent being Stefan Molyneux, host of Free Domain.
Molyneux’s channel had been active since 2006 and had amassed the largest following of any philosophy program on YouTube, as well as other social media platforms.
“Please friends – help me to raise awareness of the sudden suspension of my YouTube channel of 14 years – please politely tag @TeamYouTube to help correct this egregious error,” Molyneux said on Twitter.
https://twitter.com/StefanMolyneux/status/1277659814831820801
Molyneux also stated that YouTube had “just suspended the largest philosophy conversation the world has ever known.”
https://twitter.com/StefanMolyneux/status/1277665653000986625
Molyneux later uploaded a statement about his ban to Twitter, revealing that Google accused him of using his channel to foment violence.
https://twitter.com/StefanMolyneux/status/1277720270304919552
The suspension of Molyneux’s account comes within the same time frame as a massive purge on Reddit, in which over 2,000 subreddits were banned:
On Monday, Reddit banned over two thousand subreddits today, including r/The_Donald and r/TheNewRight, allegedly to stop the “promotion of hate” on the social media platform.
In an announcement posted on Reddit, Steve Huffman, co-founder and CEO of the company, said that “communities and users that promote hate based on identity or vulnerability will be banned,” and that over 2000 subreddits were removed, although only 200 had more than 10 daily users.
The announcement was pre-empted by a post on Sunday, claiming that the site’s “largest ever banwave” was on the way, claiming that the framing of the narrative would be largely bogus, and was instead a push for wider censorship:
I’ve been working in the San Francisco tech industry for about 15 years now and have a few friends that work at Reddit. Apparently they’re going to ban a large number of subs on Monday and frame it as an anti-racism initiative, but the scope of the subs being banned is supposed to be larger than that. The staff is anticipating that things are going to be crazy. That’s all I know.
A number of subreddits were banned, including right-leaning subreddits, such as r/The_Donald, r/TheNewRight, r/RightWingLGBT, r/rightwingcomics and r/Groyper_Movement.
Over the weekend, Amazon-owned streaming platform Twitch temporarily banned the account of President Donald Trump, and permanently banned streaming star Dr. Disrespect without providing any explanation.
This article was updated to include a statement from Molyneux.
